


Gingerbread

by Infiniteleft



Category: Love Live! School Idol Festival (Video Game), Love Live! Sunshine!!
Genre: Baking, Crushes, F/F, Fluff, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:55:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28146444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infiniteleft/pseuds/Infiniteleft
Summary: Ruby's discovering she's got a bad track record in the kitchen. Yoshiko is not amused.
Relationships: Kurosawa Ruby/Tsushima Yoshiko
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Gingerbread

Well, this was a start. Surveying the counters in front of her, Ruby gave a thoughtful swipe of her towel over the messy surface. “So, um, how long did it say we had to bake them again?” Flour puffed up into the air as she carelessly tried to sweep it onto the floor, where she could pick it up with a broom later. The dough strands stuck to the countertop were another matter, though... 

“I… uh…” Yoshiko swirled around, seemingly searching for something. She patted the bags of stuff left out in front of her, even lifting some up. Uh-oh. Ruby slowed down, her brows kneading together into a worried frown. Had they lost the directions somehow? “It was  _ right _ here?!” Yoshiko squeaked, locking eyes with her.

“O-oh… that’s not good… did we… did we throw them out?” Worried, she stepped around the pile of white to check the trash can. Eggshells, eggshells, bag of brown sugar… nope. She didn’t see it, and neither did she really want to reach into it to try and find it. Turning her head around, she relayed as much to her friend, who meandered over to peer inside as well. Yoshiko stuck her tongue out and reached for an empty paper towel roll, and poked around inside. Eugh. Nothing.

They stared at each other once she stood back up.

“Do you think… do you think we can just keep an eye on it?” Ruby wondered, peeking at the oven which seemed ominously dark and foreboding on the inside. Hard to believe that gingerbread was being made inside such a dangerous tool… liable to explode or catch fire with any wrong move...

“For an hour?!”

“I-it takes an hour? I thought it was only thirty minutes!”

“Riri says things usually take an hour in the oven! Unless they need another half hour…”

“B-but I thought -- it’s -- isn’t that for cakes?”

“I--” Yoshiko tore her gaze away, turning it towards the sleek, shiny metal. “...so how long do cookies bake? Maybe we could just… steal the time from another recipe?”

That… wasn’t a terrible idea. Ruby pressed her fists to her cheeks. At the very least, it could serve as a guideline. There was a little bit of a catch, though… She looked at Yoshiko again. “Do we have one?”

Incredulity was what greeted her, as Yoshiko slowly turned her head around back to Ruby. “Why are you asking me?! This is  _ your _ kitchen!”

Another good point! Ruby had to take a moment to reorient herself. Right. She should be the one who knew where all the cookbooks were… the problem was, where were the cookbooks? “Oh. Maybe it’s in one of the cabinets…?” She pointed. “You can look in there! I’ll go see if there’s one in the living room?”

Yoshiko sighed, but relented. “Fiiiiine. Just… be quick! They’re still baking in there!”

* * *

One averted disaster later, Yoshiko was punching in the timer on the oven as Ruby waited with bated breath.  _ Beep. _ Thirty minutes began ticking down, and the two of them watched it for all of five seconds before getting distracted.

“We should  _ probably _ clean this up…” Ruby closed the book, placing it on one of the few clean spots left in the kitchen. They hadn’t even put the eggs away, which was a little concerning. They hadn’t been out that long, had they? She hoped not.

Yoshiko scowled a little and kicked at the flour on the floor. “I guess.”

“Sis is gonna be really mad if she comes home and finds out there’s dough in the cabinets…”

A pause. Yoshiko seemed to survey the room before laughing -- though the sound was a bit strained, she noted. “Heh-heh-heh… not to worry, little demon! I will keep you safe from your sister’s wrath. Come close into my protection… and we’ll begin anew.. This kitchen will be cleaner than it’s ever been! Are you with me?!”

“R-right!” There was no getting out of it, and if it meant going with whatever plan was brewing in Yoshiko’s mind, that would do. She could only hope the tornado of chaos that was about to unfurl would help her out...

* * *

  
Ruby tilted her head. _Hm…_ she pointed. “Yoshiko, you’ve got… uh…”

“What?”

“You’ve got… uhm… there’s some frosting on your face. Right there.”

Blink blink. A hand batted up to scrub her cheek. Ruby winced a little before Yoshiko looked back at her for inspection. Oh, that made it worse… her friend must’ve read what awss in the expression on her face, because she wiped at it again. Ruby sighed, then stood up.

“Wh-- where are you going?”

“One second!” She thankfully found a fresh towel in the drawer, and flipped the sink on, letting it warm under her fingers. Once satisfied, she stuck the face cloth under it before shutting it off, squeezing the corner a little bit. She sat back down at the table and gestured for Yoshiko to lean forward.

Yoshiko had to have known what was coming, given the small pout, but she obeyed anyway. Gently, Ruby placed her hand on her cheek, tilting her head to the side where Yoshiko leaned into the touch. She swiped the towel over her cheek, frowning when it smeared around at first. A couple more swipes, though… it was clean.

“You really didn’t have to do that,” Yoshiko mumbled as Ruby patted her cheek dry. Was it her imagination, or was her friend a little red in the face?

“We would’ve been here forever if you kept trying to get it… maybe we made it too thick?” Ruby cast a worried glance to the bowl of icing they’d prepared. 

“Of course not! Gingerbread frosting is supposed to be thick! It needs to hold it together, right?” Yoshiko lightly grasped her wrist, and with a start, Ruby realized that she’d almost poked her friend in the eye. Oops. Why hadn’t she let go, though…?

Ruby pulled her hands away, missing the slightly lost look Yoshiko wore when she did. “That’s if we’re making a house… we’ve only got the cookies.”

“Well, yeah, but this is just the test batch to see if they’ll hold up!”

“I guess…” She leaned forward onto the table, holding her chin in her hands. Musing on thoughts you should elaborate upon. She thought a lot of thoughts before Yoshiko leaned forward as well, folding her arms onto the table and just staring at her curiously. As if silently asking for her thoughts. Or just studying her profile for some reason, but she really thought it was just trying to get her to talk.

What was she even thinking about?

Shaking her head, Ruby cast another look over to the cooling batch of cookies. “I’ll just, um… go get everything into the bowls… where did you put th--”

“Everything’s already in tupperware in the bag on the counter. In the back, there. I figured it would save us some time.”

Ruby cast a glance over her shoulder as she stood up to fetch them. “You weren’t snacking on them early, were you, Yoshiko?”

Her friend shot up, and she couldn’t tell if the offense and hurt in her eyes was genuine or not. “Of course I wasn’t! I was saving it for you! So we could do it together…”

“Oh.” She felt a brief tinge of remorse that was easily, easily outshined by the weirdo feeling she’s been getting all day. It was kind of nice, though. She flashed a smile towards Yoshiko, who seemed to take this as her apology and returned it. “I guess a couple couldn’t hurt, could it? We don’t need  _ that _ many anyway…”

* * *

They’d divided the cookies up between themselves before setting to work. Unfortunately, while trying to remove a couple from the pan, limbs (and a whole entire head) broke off, reminding them why they should’ve used baking paper instead of the remnants of the cooking spray Ruby had pulled out from over the stove.

Yoshiko had only laughed and claimed them for her own, promising she’d fix them. Well… if she wanted to perform surgery on baked goods, Ruby supposed that was all too much like her, salvaging what others might’ve deemed ‘not good enough’, or even discarded. It was admirable, really.

Her hands brushed against Yoshiko’s in the bowl. And yet, Yoshiko didn’t shy away from it, only teasingly nudging her out of the way of the gumdrops. When Ruby locked eyes with her, Yoshiko only smirked, popping a lime one into her mouth gleefully. She opened her mouth to try and chide her, hearing her sister’s voice in her head, but Yoshiko took this as a chance to stick a cherry one into her mouth.

Her teeth were loud as she snapped her mouth shut, owlishly blinking at her. Wha…? How did this happen? The sugary coating melted on her tongue, washing away any desire to keep to her plan of not eating any until they were done with the decorations.

If the look her friend gave her was anything to go by, that was her plan exactly.


End file.
